To what extent can hazards be controlled and managed?

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Introduction

Hazards To what extent can hazards be controlled and managed? Hazards are the bane of most LEDC's throughout the world retarding development and causing colossal amounts of destruction and death, killing over a hundred and forty people in one sea surge alone in 1991 in Bangladesh. This has meant that there has been a desperate response to these natural phenomena by rich and poor governments alike to reduce the affects of natural hazards, be it through controlling the hazard or managing it. There are many different natural hazards that people suffer from and many different ways by which governments and people and control and manage them, however, I cannot speak here about all of them in sufficient detail, so I have decided to concentrate, on the most dangerous type of hazard, floods, which cause the most death and destruction than any hazard, affecting 32% of all people affected by natural hazards. Than I shall speak about how drought, which causes amazing amounts of damage and affects 30% of all people affected by hazards, but causes less than 3% of deaths, is managed since unlike flooding the damage is more superficial, I shall contrast this to Earthquakes, which cannot be controlled, however the amount of management that takes place, can reduce its affect massively reducing the amount of death to almost nil. ...read more.

Middle

If a drought is when a country suffers a shortfall in rainfall, than it cannot be controlled, though in Omaha, they have attempted this by cloud seeding, though this has not been proven to work. However, many people refer to drought in the hydrological context which can be controlled, quiet easily, though requiring many resources and so only affecting poorer countries. In the Sahel, 100'000 people died in 1973 due to drought, this drought is a perfect example of bad control as the drought was augmented substantially due to people changing there crops to rain fed agriculture and increasing their crop size due to 'good' rainfall in the 1950's and 1960's. This was not helped by the government who made people grow more cash crops which are rain reliant to earn more money, increasing the amount of rain fed crops, and reducing the amount of nomadic herding which was adapted to uncertain and irregular rainfall. This has been made worse by the fact that 90% of wood is used for firewood increasing the albedo affect of the earth and reducing rainfall further. All these controlling factors help increase the likelihood of drought and famine, and are all controlled by humans. ...read more.

Conclusion

In Los Angeles, to reduce the effects of any Earthquakes all buildings have to be shock resistant meaning they are not affected by resonance in the Earth, allowing the energy to dissipate, out of the building stopping them from cracking or braking. This can greatly improve the chances of survival as the earthquake in Turkey which caused 20'000 deaths, caused so many mainly due to corruption in the government, taking bribes from developers who were not building, government building and normal buildings to Earthquake specifications. Also in Los Angeles they have very good transport links and have fleets of helicopters who can bring aid and help almost immediately, meaning that very few people will die in the aftermath, trapped in buildings and due to disease. So to conclude, there are many ways of controlling, and managing hazards, and if the amount of resources put in is adequate it is possible to reduce the affects of any hazard to almost nil. As in America, even when there is no way, currently in our technological grasp of controlling some hazards, death and destruction can still be kept to a minimum through management. This can be see in poor countries where mismanagement by governments who are trying to make more money, taking a big risk and putting the interest of their people on line, can make hazards worse, having the opposite effect. Michael John Rodriguez from Bow El Toro ...read more.

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